Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott and the city’s council are seeking legal action against the owner and operator of the Dali container ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge and caused its collapse, resulting in the deaths of six people.
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In a filing with Baltimore’s U.S. District Court on Monday, the claimants requested a jury trial against the vessel’s owner Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and manager Synergy Marine Private Ltd., alleging negligence that ultimately resulted in the shutdown of the Port of Baltimore and harmed the city itself.
“For more than four decades, cargo ships made thousands of trips every year under the Key Bridge without incident,” the complaint said. “There was nothing about March 26, 2024 that should have changed that. But Petitioners, Grace Ocean Pte Ltd and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd saw fit to put a clearly unseaworthy vessel into the water. Petitioners’ actions were grossly and potentially criminally negligent. In no way should their liability be limited.”
After the fatal collapse, Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine filed a petition in the court seeking to limit their legal liability. Their joint filing seeks to cap the companies’ liability at roughly $43.7 million. The Maryland court will ultimately decide who is responsible and how much they owe.
In the complaint, Scott and co. said no blame could “conceivably be lain at the City’s feet for the allision,” indicating that it was “a direct and proximate result of Petitioners’ carelessness, negligence, gross negligence and recklessness.”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation have been investigating the crash since the collapse last month. The NTSB is expected to release a preliminary report into its probe in early May.
The FBI has also opened a separate criminal probe into the disaster.
Within the complaint, the claimants referred to an Associated Press report from April 15, in which one source said alarms on the Dali’s refrigerated containers went off while the ship was docked in Baltimore. The source said those alarms were indicative of an inconsistent power supply, with their lack of investigation resulting in the ship losing power at 1:24 a.m.—four minutes before the vessel crashed into the 1.6-mile bridge’s support beams.
According to Scott and the city council, the Singapore-based accused parties failed to provide the vessel with adequate policies and procedures, or properly equip and maintain the ship.
The filing took shots not just at the owner and operator, but at the crew of the Maersk-chartered ship, calling the bunch “incompetent” and “inattentive to its duties,” and saying they lacked skill and training, and improperly navigated the vessel.
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The city said it would bear the impact of the bridge’s cleanup and replacement, loss of tax revenues and the overall strain on Baltimore’s roads diverted from the now missing Key Bridge.
New shipping channels open as wreckage is cleared
As Baltimore officials seek damages in the courts, recovery teams are working to open more channels for commercial ships to enter and leave the city’s port.
On Friday, the Unified Command response and recovery team officially opened a third temporary alternate channel to provide limited access for commercially essential vessels seeking passage to the Port of Baltimore.
This channel has a controlling depth of 20 feet, a 300-foot horizontal clearance and a vertical clearance of 135 feet.
According to U.S. Coast Guard Captain David O’Connell, who serves as the federal on-scene coordinator of the Key Bridge response team, Unified Command estimates facilitating approximately 15 percent of pre-collapse commercial activity with the route.
Unified Command isn’t done there, with the team scheduled to open an even bigger fourth channel by Thursday, April 25, with a controlling depth of 35 feet, a 300-foot horizontal clearance, and vertical clearance of 214 feet.
Called the Fort McHenry Limited Access Channel, the lane is planned to open to commercially essential vessels from Thursday until 6 a.m. on Monday, April 29, according to a marine safety bulletin issued Monday evening by the Coast Guard, which indicated that weather could impact the schedule.
Vessels hoping to transit the new channel, which runs close to the still-immobile Dali, will have to request access and be approved based on their size and other factors. Deeper-draft vessels will need to be operated by a Maryland pilot and escorted by two tugboats.
Due to “critical and highly dynamic salvage operations” designed to clear the channel, the passage will close again either April 29 or 30, and will not open for a second time until approximately May 10.
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